Makers of Many Things

I remember being once upon a time ten miles from a store and one mile from a neighbor; the fire had gone out in the night, and the last match failed to blaze. We had no flint and steel. We were neither Indians nor Boy Scouts, and we did not know how to make a fire by twirling a stick. There was nothing to do but to trudge off through the snow to the neighbor a mile away and beg some matches. Then was the time when we appreciated the little match and thought with profound respect of the men who invented and perfected it.

It is a long way from the safe and reliable match of to-day back to the splinters that were soaked in chemicals and sold together with little bottles of sulphuric acid. The splinter was expected to blaze when dipped into the acid. Sometimes it did blaze, and sometimes it did not; but it was reasonably certain how the acid would behave, for it would always sputter and do its best to spoil some one's clothes. Nevertheless, even such matches as these were regarded as a wonderful convenience, and were sold at five dollars a hundred. With the next kind of match that appeared, a piece of folded sandpaper was sold, and the buyer was told to pinch it hard and draw the match through the fold. These matches were amazingly cheap-eighty-four of them for only twenty-five cents! There have been all sorts of odd matches. One kind actually had a tiny glass ball at the end full of sulphuric acid. To light this, you had to pinch the ball and the acid that was thus let out acted upon the other chemicals on the match and kindled it-or was expected to kindle it, which was not always the same thing.

Making matches is a big business, even if one hundred of them are sold for a cent. It is estimated that on an average each person uses seven matches every day. To provide so many would require some seven hundred million matches a day in this country alone. It seems like a very simple matter to cut a splinter of wood, dip it into some chemicals, and pack it into a box for sale; and it would be simple if it were all done by hand, but the matches would also be irregular and extremely expensive. The way to make anything cheap and uniform is to manufacture it by machinery.

THE ENDLESS MATCH MACHINE

The match splints are set in tiny holes like pins in a pincushion, and the belt revolves, passing their heads through various chemicals.

The first step in making matches is to select some white-pine plank of good quality and cut it into blocks of the proper size. These are fed into a machine which sends sharp dies through them and thus cuts the match splints. Over the splint cutter a carrier chain is continuously moving, and into holes in this chain the ends of the match splints are forced at the rate of ten or twelve thousand a minute.

The splints remain in the chain for about an hour, and during this hour all sorts of things happen to them. First, they are dipped into hot paraffin wax, because this will light even more easily than wood. As soon as the wax is dry, the industrious chain carries them over a dipping-roll covered with a layer consisting partly of glue and rosin. Currents of air now play upon the splint, and in about ten minutes the glue and rosin on one end of it have hardened into a hard bulb. It is not a match yet by any means, for scratching it would not make it light. The phosphorus which is to make it into a match is on another dipping-roll. This is sesqui-sulphide of phosphorus. The common yellow phosphorus is poisonous, and workmen in match factories where it was used were in danger of suffering from a terrible disease of the jaw bone. At length it was discovered that sesqui-sulphide of phosphorus would make just as good matches and was harmless. Our largest match company held the patent giving them the exclusive right to certain processes by which the sesqui-sulphide was made; and this patent they generously gave up to the people of the United States.

After the splints have been dipped into the preparation of phosphorus, they are carried about on the chain vertically, horizontally, on the outside of some wheels and the inside of others, and through currents of air. Then they are turned over to a chain divided into sections which carries them to a packing-machine. This machine packs them into boxes, a certain number in each box, and they are slid down to girls who make the boxes into packages. These are put into wooden containers and are ready for sale.

As in most manufactures, these processes must be carried on with great care and exactness. The wood must be carefully selected and of straight grain, the dipping-rolls must be kept covered with a fresh supply of composition, and its depth must be always uniform. Even the currents of air in which the splints are dried must be just warm enough to dry them and just moist enough not to dry them too rapidly.

The old sulphur matches made in "card and block" can no longer be bought in this country; the safety match has taken their place. One kind of safety match has the phosphorus on the box and the other igniting substances on the match, so that the match will not light unless it is scratched on the box; but this kind has never been a favorite in the United States. The second kind, the one generally used, may be struck anywhere, but these matches are safe because even stepping upon one will not light it; it must be scratched.

A match is a little thing, but nothing else can do its work.

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When you pick a dandelion or a milkweed, a white sticky "milk" oozes out; and this looks just like the juice of the various sorts of trees, shrubs, and vines from which India rubber is made. The "rubber plant" which has been such a favorite in houses is one of these; in India it becomes a large tree which has the peculiar habit of dropping down from its branches "bush-ropes," as they are called. These take root and become stout trunks.

There is literally a "rubber belt" around the world, for nearly all rubber comes from the countries lying between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. More than half of all that is brought to market is produced in the valley of the Amazon River; and some of this "Para rubber," as it is called, from the seaport whence it is shipped, is the best in the world.

Courtesy General Rubber Co.

TAPPING RUBBER TREES IN SUMATRA

The plantation on which this photograph was taken has 45,000 acres of planted rubber trees, and employs 14,000 coolies.

The juice or latex flows best about sunrise, and so the natives who collect it have to be early risers. They make little cuts in the bark of the tree, stick on with a bit of clay a tiny cup underneath each cut, and move on through the forest to the next tree. Sometimes they make narrow V-shaped cuts in the bark, one above another, but all coming into a perpendicular channel leading to the foot of the tree. Later in the day the collectors empty the cups into great jugs and carry them to the camp.

When the rubber juice reaches the camp, it is poured into a great bowl. The men build a fire of sticks, and always add a great many palm nuts, which are oily and make a good deal of smoke. Over the fire they place an earthen jar shaped like a cone, but without top or bottom. Now work begins. It is fortunate that it can be done in the open air, and that the man can sit on the windward side, for the smoke rises through the smaller hole thick and black and suffocating. The man takes a stick shaped like a paddle, dips it into the bowl, and holds it in the smoke and heat, turning it rapidly over and over till the water is nearly dried out of the rubber and it is no longer milky, but dark-colored. Then he dips this paddle in again and again. It grows heavier at each dipping, but he keeps on till he has five or six pounds of rubber. With a wet knife he cuts this off, making what are called "biscuits." After many years of this sort of work, some one found that by resting one end of a pole in a crotched stick and holding the other in his hand, a man could make a much larger biscuit.

For a long time people thought that rubber trees could not be cultivated. One difficulty in taking them away from their original home to plant is that the seeds are so rich in oil as to become rancid unusually soon. At length, however, a consignment of them was packed in openwork baskets between layers of dried wild banana leaves and slung up on deck in openwork crates so as to have plenty of air. By this means seven thousand healthy little plants were soon growing in England, and from there were carried to Ceylon and the East.

On the rubber plantations collecting juice from trees standing near together and in open ground is an altogether different matter from cutting a narrow path and forcing one's way through a South American or African jungle. The bark of the trees is cut in herringbone fashion. The collector simply slices a thin piece off the bark and at once milk begins to ooze out.

On the great plantations of the East the rubber is collected chiefly by Chinese and Indians. They are carefully taught just how to tap the trees. They begin four or five feet from the ground, and work down, cutting the thinnest possible slice at each visit. When they have almost reached the ground, they begin on the opposite side of the trunk; and by the time they have reached the ground on that side the bark on the first side has renewed itself. The latex is strained and mixed with some acid, usually acetic, in order to coagulate or thicken it. It is then run between rollers, hung in a drying house, and generally in a smokehouse.

The rubber arrives at the factory in bales or cases. First of all it must be thoroughly washed in order to get rid of sand or bits of leaves and wood. A machine called a "washer" does this work. It forces the rubber between grooved rolls which break it up; and as this is done under a spray of water, the rubber is much cleaner when it comes out. Another machine makes it still cleaner and forms it into long sheets about two feet wide.

Having thoroughly wet the rubber, the next step is to dry it thoroughly. The old way was to hang it up for several weeks. The new way is to cut it into strips, lay it upon steel trays, and place it in a vacuum dryer. This is kept hot, and whatever moisture is in the rubber is either evaporated or sucked out by a vacuum pump. It now passes through another machine much like the washer, and is formed into sheets. The square threads from which elastic webbing is made may be cut from these sheets, though sometimes the sheet is wound on an iron drum, vulcanized by being put into hot water, lightly varnished with shellac to stiffen it, then wound on a wooden cylinder, and cut into square threads. Boiling these in caustic soda removes the shellac. To make round threads, softened rubber is forced through a die. Rubber bands are made by cementing a sheet of rubber into a tube and then cutting them off at whatever width may be desired. Toy balloons are made of such rubber. Two pieces are stamped out and joined by a particularly noisy machine, and then the balloon is blown out by compressed air.

Early in the nineteenth century it was known that rubber would keep out water, but it was sticky and unmanageable. After a while a Scotch chemist named McIntosh succeeded in dissolving rubber in naphtha and spreading it between two thicknesses of cloth. That is why his name is given to raincoats made in this way. Overshoes, too, were made of pure rubber poured over clay lasts which were broken after the rubber had dried. These overshoes were waterproof,-there was no denying that; but they were heavy and clumsy and shapeless. When they were taken off, they did not stand up, but promptly fell over. In hot weather they became so sticky that they had to be kept in the cellar; and in winter they became stiff and inelastic, but they never wore out. How to get rid of the undesirable qualities and not lose the desirable ones was the question. It was found out that if sulphur was mixed with rubber, the disagreeable stickiness would vanish; but the rubbers continued to melt and to freeze by turns until an American named Charles Goodyear discovered that if rubber mixed with sulphur was exposed to about 300° F. of heat for a number of hours, the rubber would remain elastic, but would not be sticky and would no longer be affected by heat or cold. This is why you often see the name Goodyear on the bottom of rubbers.

Rubber overshoes were improved at once. As they now are made, the rubber is mixed with sulphur, whiting, litharge, and several other substances. An honest firm will add only those materials that will be of service in making the rubber more easy to mould or will improve it in some way. Unfortunately, substances are often added, not for this purpose, but to increase the weight and apparent value of the articles. That is why some rubber overshoes, for instance, wear out so much faster than others.

To make an overshoe, the rubber is run through rollers and formed into thick sheets for soles and thinner sheets for uppers. Another machine coats with gum the cloth used for lining and stays. Rubber and rubber-lined cloth go to the cutting-room, where all the different parts of the shoes are cut out. They are then put together and varnished. While still on the last, they are dipped into a tank of varnish and vulcanized-a very simple matter now that Goodyear has shown us how, for they are merely left in large, thoroughly heated ovens for eight or ten hours. The rubber shoe or boot is now elastic, strong, waterproof, ready for any temperature, and so firmly cemented together with rubber cement that it is practically all in one piece.

During the last few years there have been frequent calls from various charities for old rubber overshoes, pieces of rubber hose, etc. These are of considerable value in rubber manufacturing. They are run through a machine which tears them to shreds, then through a sort of fanning-mill which blows away the bits of lining. Tiny pieces of iron may be present from nails or rivets; but these are easily removed by magnets. This "reclaimed" rubber is powdered and mixed with the new, and for some purposes the mixture answers very well. Imitation rubber has been made by heating oil of linseed, hemp, maize, etc., with sulphur; but no substitute for rubber is a success for all uses.

Click here to see a larger version of this photo.

Courtesy U. S. Tire Co.

HOW RUBBER GOES THROUGH THE FACTORY

Splitting Para biscuits, mixing the rubber, rolling the rubber fabric on cylinders, and building tires on the tire machines.

There are many little conveniences made of rubber which we should greatly miss, such as the little tips put into pencil ends for erasing pencil marks. These are made by filling a mould with rubber. Rubber corks are made in much the same manner. Tips for the legs of chairs are made in a two-piece mould larger at the bottom than at the top, and with a plunger that nearly fits the small end. Often on chair tips and in the cup-shaped eraser that goes over the ends of some pencils you can see the "fin," as the glassworkers call it, where the two pieces of the mould did not exactly fit. Rubber cannot be melted and cast in moulds like iron, but it can be gently heated and softened, and then pressed into a mould. Rubber stamps are made in this way. The making of rubber heels and soles is now a large industry; hose for watering and for vacuum and Westinghouse brakes is made in increasing quantities. The making of rubber tires for automobiles and carriages is an important industry. The enormous and increasing use of electricity requires much use of rubber as an insulator. Rubber gloves will protect an electrical workman from shock and a surgeon from infection. Rubber beds and cushions filled with air are a great comfort in illness. Rubber has great and important uses; but we should perhaps miss quite as much the little comforts and conveniences which it has made possible.

Rubber and gutta-percha are not the same substance by any means. Both of them are made of the milky juice of trees, but of entirely different trees. The gutta-percha milk is collected in an absurdly wasteful manner, namely, by cutting down the trees and scraping up the juice. When this juice reaches the market, it is in large reddish lumps which look like cork and smell like cheese. It has to be cleaned, passed through a machine that tears it into bits, then between rollers before it is ready to be manufactured. It is not elastic like rubber; it may be stretched; but it will not snap back again as rubber does. It is a remarkably good nonconductor of electricity, and therefore it has been generally used to protect ocean cables, though recently rubber has been taking its place. It makes particularly excellent casts, for when it is warm it is not sticky, but softens so perfectly that it will show the tiniest indentation of a mould. It is the best kind of splint for a broken bone. If a boy breaks his arm, a surgeon can put a piece of gutta-percha into hot water, set the bone, bind on the softened gutta-percha for a splint, and in a few minutes it will be moulded to the exact shape of the arm, but so stiff as to keep the bone in place. Another good service which gutta-percha renders to the physician results from its willingness to dissolve in chloroform. If the skin is torn off, leaving a raw surface, this dissolved gutta-percha can be poured over it, and soon it is protected by an artificial skin which keeps the air from the raw flesh and gives the real skin an opportunity to grow again.

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There is an old proverb which says, "For a good glove, Spain must dress the leather, France must cut it, and England must sew it." Many pairs of most excellent gloves have never seen any one of these countries, but the moral of the proverb remains, namely, that it takes considerable work and care to make a really good glove.

The first gloves made in the United States were of thick buckskin, for there was much heavy work to be done in the forest and on the land. The skin was tanned in Indian fashion, by rubbing into the flesh side the brains of the deer-though how the Indians ever thought of using them is a mystery. Later, the white folk tried to tan with pigs' brains; but however valuable the brains of a pig may be to himself, they do not contain the properties of soda ash which made those of the deer useful for this purpose.

CUTTING HIDES INTO GLOVES

The hides are kept in racks, and before cutting are stretched by hand. Then the steel die cuts out the shape of the glove. Notice the curiously shaped cut for the thumb.

Years ago, when a man set out to manufacture gloves, usually only a few dozen pairs, he cut out a pattern from a shingle or a piece of pasteboard, laid it upon a skin, marked around it, and cut it out with shears. Pencils were not common, but the glovemaker was fully equal to making his own. He melted some lead, ran it into a crack in the kitchen floor-and cracks were plentiful-and then used this "plummet," as it was called, for a marker. After cutting the large piece for the front and back of the glove, he cut out from the scraps remaining the "fourchettes," or forks; that is, the narrow strips that make the sides of the fingers. Smaller scraps were put in to welt the seams; and all this went off in great bundles to farmhouses to be sewed by the farmers' wives and daughters for the earning of pin-money. If the gloves were to be the most genteel members of the buckskin race, there was added to the bundle a skein of silk, with which a slender vine was to be worked on the back of the hand. The sewing was done with a needle three-sided at the point, and a stout waxed thread was used. A needle of this sort went in more easily than a round one, but even then it was rather wearisome to push it through three thicknesses of stout buckskin. Moreover, if the sewer happened to take hold of the needle too near the point, the sharp edges were likely to make little cuts in her fingers.

After a while sewing machines were invented, and factories were built, and now in a single county of the State of New York many thousand people are at work making various kinds of leather coverings for their own hands and those of other folk. Better methods of tanning have been discovered, and many sorts of leather are now used, especially for the heavier gloves. Deer are not so common as they used to be, and a "buckskin" glove is quite likely to have been made of the hide of a cow or a horse. "Kid" generally comes from the body of a sheep instead of that of a young goat. Our best real kidskin comes from a certain part of France, where the climate seems to be just suited to the young kids, there is plenty of the food that they like, and, what is fully as important, they receive the best of care. It is said that to produce the very finest kidskin, the kids are fed on nothing but milk, are treated with the utmost gentleness, and are kept in coops or pens carefully made so that there shall be nothing to scratch their tender skins.

Glovemakers are always on the lookout for new kinds of material, and when, not many years ago, there came from Arabia with a shipment of Mocha coffee two bales of an unknown sort of skin, they were eager to try it. It tanned well and made a glove that has been a favorite from the first. The skin was found to come from a sheep living in Arabia, Abyssinia, and near the headwaters of the river Nile. It was named Mocha from the coffee with which it came, and Mocha it has been ever since. The Suède glove has a surface much like that of the Mocha. Its name came from "Swede," because the Swedes were the first to use the skin with the outside in.

Most of our thinner "kid" gloves are made of lambskin; but dressing the skins is now done so skillfully in this country that "homemade" gloves are in many respects fully as good as the imported; indeed, some judges declare that in shape and stitching certain grades are better. When sheepskins and lambskins come to market from a distance, they are salted. They have to be soaked in water, all bits of flesh scraped off, and the hair removed, generally by the use of lime. After another washing, they are put into alum and salt for a few minutes; and after washing this off, they are dried, stretched, and then are ready for the softening. Nothing has been found that will soften the skins so perfectly as a mixture of flour, salt, and the yolk of eggs-"custard," as the workmen call it. The custard and the skins are tumbled together into a great iron drum which revolves till the custard has been absorbed and the skins are soft and yielding. Now they are stretched one way and another, and wet so thoroughly that they lose all the alum and salt that may be left and also much of the custard.

Now comes dyeing. The skin is laid upon a table, smooth side up, and brushed over several times with the coloring matter; very lightly, however, for if the coloring goes through the leather, the hands of the customers may be stained and they will buy no more gloves of that make. The skins are now moistened and rolled and left for several weeks to season. When they are unrolled, the whole skin is soft and pliable. It is thick, however, and no one who is not an expert can thin it properly. The process is called "mooning" because the knife used is shaped like a crescent moon. It is flat, its center is cut out, and the outer edge is sharpened. Over the inner curve is a handle. The skin is hung on a pole, and the expert workman draws the mooning knife down it until any bit of dried flesh remaining has been removed, and the skin is of the same thickness, or, rather, thinness throughout.

All this slow, careful work is needed to prepare the skin for cutting out the glove; and now it goes to the cutter. There is no longer any cutting out of gloves with shears and pasteboard patterns, but there is a quick way and a slow way nevertheless. The man who cuts in the quick way, the "block-cutter," as he is called, spreads out the skin on a big block made by bolting together planks of wood with the grain running up and down. He places a die in the shape of the glove upon the leather, gives one blow with a heavy maul, and the glove is cut out. This answers very well for the cheaper and coarser gloves, but to cut fine gloves is quite a different matter. This needs skill, and it is said that no man can do good "table-cutting" who has not had at least three years' experience; and even then he may not be able to do really first-class work. He dampens the skin, stretches it first one way and then the other, and examines it closely for flaws or scratches or weak places. He must put on his die in such a way as to get two pairs of ordinary gloves or one pair of "elbow gloves" out of the skin if possible, and yet he must avoid the poor places if there are any. No glove manufacturer can afford to employ an unskilled or careless cutter, for he will waste much more than his wages amount to. There used to be one die for the right hand and another for the left, and it was some time before it occurred to any one that the same die would cut both gloves if only the skin was turned over.

CLOSING THE GLOVE

When sewing time comes, the glove goes from hand to hand down the workroom, each stitcher doing a certain seam or seams.

WHERE THE GLOVE GETS ITS SHAPE

After inspection the glove goes to a row of men who fit it on a steam-heated brass hand, giving it its final shape and finish.

Now comes the sewing. Count the pieces in a glove, and this will give some idea of the work needed to sew them together. Notice that the fourchettes are sewed together on the wrong side, the other seams on the right side, and that the tiny bits of facing and lining are hemmed down by hand. Notice that two of the fingers have only one fourchette, while the others have two fourchettes each. Notice how neatly the ends of the fingers are finished, with never an end of thread left on the right side. The embroidery must be in exactly the right place, and it must be fastened firmly at both ends. This embroidery is not a meaningless fashion, for the lines make the hand look much more slender and of a better shape. Sewing in the thumbs needs special care and skill. There must be no puckering, and the seam must not be so tightly drawn as to leave a red line on the hand when the glove is taken off. No one person does all the sewing on a glove; it must pass through a number of hands, each doing a little. Even after all the care that is given it, a glove is a shapeless thing when it comes from the sewing machines. It is now carried to a room where stands a long table with a rather startling row of brass hands of different sizes stretching up from it. These are heated, the gloves are drawn upon them, and in a moment they have shape and finish, and are ready to be inspected and sold.

The glove is so closely associated with the hand and with the person to whom the hand belongs that in olden times it was looked upon as representing him. When, for instance, a fair could not be opened without the presence of some noble, it was enough if he sent his glove to represent him. To throw down one's glove before a man was to challenge him to a combat. At the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, as of many other sovereigns of England, the "Queen's champion," a knight in full armor, rode into the great hall and threw down his glove, crying, "If there be any manner of man that will say and maintain that our sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth, is not the rightful and undoubted inheritrix to the imperial crown of this realm of England, I say he lieth like a false traitor, and therefore I cast him my gage."

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